10 Ways How Not to Meet Your Labeling Deadline

1. Leave your labels to the very last minute.Focus on designing and producing your product. The labels don’t cost much and aren’t critical…. YET!

2. Do you even know how many labels you want? Manufacturing is building your product as we speak. Do you know what you are going to do with it when it comes off the assembly line? Does it need to go into inventory and do you have a way of knowing how many were made?

3. Did you listen to your boss when he told you he wanted to track everything as it goes through production each day – including the components of those products – for warranty purposes? How are you going to do that? He said to put serial numbers on the labels. You don’t know who assigns those numbers and when you do find out, they tell you they need a barcode too. What is a barcode? What kind of barcode do you need? How big does it have to be? Marketing or Production is just going to have to figure that out.

4. You leave the label buying to your Purchasing Department.Do they know what you need? Do they know how the product is going to be used and do they know what they are looking for when they ask a label company for a quote? Do you even know how many you are going to need? And do they know how urgently you need your labels?

5. Marketing does all your label design work and product promotion. Do they even know what the label is going on? Do they know the name of the product? Did you apply for a trade name? Whoops… we bet you didn’t realize that you’re going to have to contact your lawyers and the USPTO! On top of that Marketing will want to see a proof. That will take getting it to someone to sign off on the final label layout.

6. Your product has some space constraints but so what? You can squeeze in a label somewhere. Does Purchasing know this? What if you need a very special size or label shape? That means the label manufacturer will have to order a new die and get it shipped to them.

7. You were planning to print some of your own labels to save money. It’s only a start-up operation, after all. Do you even have a printer? Have you ever printed labels before? Where are you going to find a label printer you can quickly set up and start printing? Does that mean you will needlabel printing software? Is there some type of complete printing system that could save the day?

8.You didn’t realize the labels needed to handle some tough conditions. You just found out your product is being designed for a really rigorous application and the labels will have to hold up to the same requirements. Purchasing said you will have to test some label samples to see which one will work best on your product. There’s a good chance that the label material you need will have to be specially ordered and take extra time to be made.

9. On top of all this, you forgot that you need a “UL Recognized” label to go on your product. Gee, you don’t even know what “UL Recognized” means? Where do you find a UL label printer that can help you out? Is that going to mean you need a special label material? What is UL?

10. Whoops – The purchasing department is closed for a holiday and so they won’t be able to even order your labels for a few days. That’s definitely going to hold up shipping your product to your customers! Guess you might as well give up and go home…